The next hurdle was the R9 Fury X‘s liquid cooling lines. Placing the Mac mini with the Apple logo face outwards provides easier access to the Power button. This placement did not work very well due to the hidden location of the Power button. I initially wanted the underside of the Mac mini to face outwards and without the bottom cover for better air flow (read: to look cool). I plugged the cables into the back of the Mac mini prior to fitting it inside the AKiTiO Node. Routing the Mac mini‘s power cord and Thunderbolt cable was a challenge because I didn’t want to modify the casing of the Mac mini or the AKiTiO Node. The AKiTiO Node‘s fan and its bracket do have to be removed to accommodate this unusual pairing. It turned out to be a perfect fit for a Mac mini. I measured the empty space between the power supply housing and the front of the enclosure.

You may have seen disassembled photos of the AKiTiO Node. This Mac mini is now running 10.12 Sierra with a pair of SSDs in RAID-0, 8GB of RAM, and an R9 Fury X external GPU. I did some upgrades to what many would consider an outdated and least powerful Mac then paired it with the highest performing AMD graphics card that works in macOS.

I hadn’t been making use of this Mac mini and figured I would try something fun. The Mid 2011 Mac mini was one of the first Macs to have Thunderbolt connectivity ( full list of Thunderbolt-equipped Macs). There’s virtually no demand on the Mac mini front, so it’s not often you see an eGPU setup with it. There is definitely demand for a more powerful GPU setup from Mac Pro users. But what about Mac desktops that have no standard PCIe slots? The Mac Pro trashcan and Mac mini are such machines. External GPU implementations have proved to be successful for Mac laptops.

Mid 2011 mac mini ports